Sensis’ Tradingpost Launches Auction Site To Compete With eBay!
This morning tradingpost.com.au has become the newest Australian auction site, to compete head on with eBay Australia.
Tradingpost.com.au (owned by Sensis) is a strong brand name with Australians and been around for many years as a classifieds print publication, and for some time now a website too.
I have never much liked the tradingpost.com.au search and display results (the whole site needed a pretty major rework to be honest) and they have certainly done that now!
The tradingpost auctions site has been a long time in the making, obviously. So, what can we see from this site change this morning?
Fees
In summary,
- free to list!
- bold titles $1.95
- Short desc (shown in search) 50c
Free listings (quantity of listings will be limited by previous month’s sales) will be a big draw card for sellers. Apparently the Traderpro application from trading post will accept turbo lister data (although at the moment it isn’t working too well).
First Impressions
The site is good rework from the ‘old’ tradingpost, with a lighter look and an interface that isn’t quite as clumsy. It still takes a few too many clicks to see ‘listings’, but that might change.
Search seems to be improved a little.
There are very few auctions yet, this will take some time, and the site is extremely slow (probably getting quite a lot of curious traffic today!) so they will need to work on that before the ‘official’ launch.
Will it work?
Only time will tell. Tradingpost claim 2 million visitors per month, but are not known for auctions or as a place to buy from larger sellers (tradingpost has always been home of the single classified listing from individual sellers, with a strong focus on used vehicles).
What I do know is Sensis has planned a large advertising budget for this site, and with the current sentiments of eBay sellers due to eBay Australia’s PayPal only decision and other feedback changes there could be a large influx of listings from businesses keen to spread their eggs around.
But will there be enough buyers? Lets hope so.
In other news, eBay announced recently that starting yesterday they are offering half price insertion fees for 10 days…
Related Posts :
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Alot of things are occuring since ebay’s decision to push members into paypal payments only.
1) OZtion sales going strong.
2) Trading Post launches its site for Auctions.
3) Oztion has been bought for a million dollars.
4) New sites are popping up such as http://www.auctionzone.com.au
Its an interesting time to see how things settle down.
Good luck to the Trading Post, I have been a buyer on it for many many years.
Roy